Person and presence: the ethics of second-person interpersonal recognition and the new digital technologies

• Grant number: 22/09403-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: January 31, 2023
• End date: July 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Mariana Claudia Broens
• Grantee: Felipe Eleutério Pereira
• Supervisor: Antoni Gomila
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB), Spain
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/03548-3 - Interpersonal recognition and the dynamics of opinion formation: Analysis of the impacts of ICT on personal identity from the second person perspective, BP.MS

Abstract

We intend to investigate the relationship between personhood and interpersonal recognition specifically in the context of the second person thesis, discussing the basic character of second person processes, including at the juncture of social interactions mediated by new information and communication technologies (ICTs). More specifically, we aim to analyze the relevance of the acquisition of psychological concepts for the actualization of personhood, or the condition of being a person, a neologism suggested by Gomila (2000). First, we intend to discuss the fact that second-person relationships, as described by Gomila and Pérez (2017, 2018) would occur just body-to-body, from agents who must share the same context of interaction and perceive each other directly, elements these that would be absent in the interactions performed over the internet. At the same time, Pérez and Gomila (2021) also argue that it would be an inadequate simplification to say that second-person attributions (according to them implicit, practical, transparent, reciprocally contingent) would only occur in face-to-face interactive situations (Gomila, 2001; Scotto, 2002; Pérez and Gomila, 2021). Thus, we propose to discuss the thesis that presentiality (body-to-body) would be a necessary condition for the dynamics of interpersonal recognition in the second person. We will verify the hypothesis that ICTs may be enabling a type of synchronous interpersonal interaction that, from the point of view of the phenomenal experience of the agents, under several aspects, would be qualitatively similar to face-to-face interactions that allow the attribution/recognition of psychological states, although the agents do not simultaneously share the same ecological context. (AU)